Following up his monumental six-volume novel/memoir My Struggle, Karl Ove Knausgaard made a radical shift, penning this volume of brief, compulsively readable essays on some of life's most underappreciated or misunderstood aspects. Ostensibly written for Knausgaard's unborn daughter, the more than 60 texts here find the Norwegian author in lyrical mode, expressing wonder at frogs, limes, church architecture, and Vincent van Gogh, but also rubber boots, toilets, buttons, badgers, and even lice.

"Knausgaard can take the breath away, his compressed vignettes delivering the same emotional charge as longer sequences from his previous work.... This first volume of the Seasons Quartet quietly illuminates Knausgaard's profound gift for making the reader see the world in fresh and unpredictable ways."—Guardian (London)